Erwin McManus is a pastor, author, thought leader, and futurist. In his book—An Unstoppable Force—he wryly states:

“Our communities need to change; our city needs to change; our nation needs to change; the world needs to change. Everybody needs to change except the church. The church is just fine the way she is. In fact, the church becomes the last bastion of protection against change; the reminder of what the world looked like before it changed; the preserver of tradition and ritual, rather than a catalyst and advancer of the Kingdom of God...While not many churches perform their services in Latin today, our language, style, music, and methods are pretty much Latin to the unchurched population.”

You may agree or disagree with him, but generally speaking, I fear he is correct. Secondly, this not only affects us in church world, but is also true in some of our businesses and non-profits. Our successes of yesterday can become our greatest hindrance to future success. What has worked in the past will not always work in the future. Upgrades are often necessary for our systems, technology, and in our changing social environments. While the truth itself never changes, how we communicate it does. Otherwise, we can actually end up changing the truth (see this article regarding the King James Version debate). 

Furthermore, by not changing we can also end up changing our mission. When our mission focuses on preservation and maintaining the status quo rather than on advancement and taking new ground, our demise is not far away. In the business world, our products and services become obsolete and we go out of business. In church world, we simply become irrelevant; no one in the neighborhood is impacted by our presence, and nor do they care.

Individually or corporately, I think we all would like to be considered an unstoppable force. But as McManus has pointed out: “Once survival has become our supreme goal, we have lost our way.” We become stoppable when we fail to embrace change or refuse to make difficult decisions that move us out of our comfort zone. An unstoppable force is one that thrives because it is continually adjusting and innovating toward the needs of the present and future.